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Dalton was born as Marlene Wasden in Las Vegas, Nevada.[1] Dalton has three children by her marriage to Jack Smith (which ended in divorce), including actress Kathleen Kinmont. Kinmont was married to Lorenzo Lamas, her onscreen son in Falcon Crest.[2]

Dalton played a nurse, Martha Hale, on CBS's Hennesey (she was nominated for Emmy Award for her role[4]) with Jackie Cooper in the title role, and she portrayed Joey Bishop's wife on The Joey Bishop Show, a situation comedy on NBC and CBS from 1961 to 1965. As the Hennessey series was ending, The Joey Bishop Show was preparing for its premiere on NBC. Dalton played the role of Ellie Barnes, the wife of Joey Barnes (Joey Bishop). As the show premiered on September 15, 1962, Dalton and Bishop are shown as newlyweds Ellie and Joey Barnes. Hennessey's series finale program was aired two days later, on September 17, 1962, with Martha Hale's marriage to Chick Hennessey. Dalton hence married two different television characters on two different networks within two days.

Dalton was cast in the original pilot for what became the ABC series Barney Miller, as Barney's wife. However, that version of the pilot, for a show called The Days and Nights of Captain Barney Miller, was rejected by the network, and the role was recast with Barbara Barrie. In 1977, she appeared in an episode of the ABC crime drama The Feather and Father Gang.

In later years, Dalton played winemaker Julia Cumson on CBS's Falcon Crest.[5] In the story line, Julia is the daughter of Angela Channing (Jane Wyman) and the mother of Lance Cumson (Lorenzo Lamas). On Falcon Crest, Dalton's character, Julia, was at quiet odds with her mother, Angela, played by the legendary Jane Wyman. For the show's first two seasons, she was troubled but basically decent, and in the second season finale, was revealed to be a murderess. Much of the third season focused on her dealing with life both in prison and a mental institution, and towards the end of the season, her character escaped from the mental institution to try and kill her mother while disguised as a nun. Julia was believed to have been killed in the second to last episode, but soon into the fourth season, she revealed herself to her sister Emma to be alive. Her storyline had her being held by Nazi conspirators who wanted control of Falcon Crest, but it ended mid season and Dalton was written out along with the villains. She returned sporadically during the fifth and sixth seasons as the storyline dictated, but was absent through the remainder of the run. After leaving the series, Dalton had guest starring roles on Hotel and Murder, She Wrote.